The Road to a Cure : Local AIDS Riders Love Every Grueling Minute

After nearly 450 miles of tough but scenic bicycling, Victoria Barlow and Sabrina Manion rolled into their home county Friday among the 2,275 cyclists of California AIDS Ride 3.

The long, hard ride has left them smiling, sore, tanned and completely surprised. The two Amgen workers had set out to raise money for AIDS care in Los Angeles and San Francisco. With a third rider, they raised $14,000 of the $7.9 million reaped so far by the ride.

But they also returned after a grueling, 90-mile leg of the weeklong trip with what they called a renewed faith in humanity.

“This has been the greatest week of my life,” said Barlow, 30, of Oxnard. “It’s just overwhelming emotionally. When I see just one person out there on the road clapping for us, I want to cry.”

Manion, 28, of Thousand Oaks, relaxed with a beer in the late afternoon sun as riders set up tents in the camp at San Buenaventura State Beach, the evening’s site for the mobile city that is the AIDS Ride.

“I have never been surrounded with so much warmth and love in my life,” Manion said. “The support we get from the crew and volunteers is just amazing, and every time you come in [to camp], there are people clapping and cheering for you.”

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Without that support, she said, she could not have survived the harsh ride.

The two women joined the ride, which began in San Francisco on Sunday and will end in Los Angeles today, for deeply personal reasons.

AIDS killed Barlow’s brother, Ezra, in the early 1980s.

“He drank a lot and partied real hard--lots of sex, lots of drugs,” she said matter-of-factly. “And when he found out he had AIDS, he really didn’t alter his lifestyle.”

Ignorance about AIDS was almost universal in those days. Her mother, who let Ezra stay at home until he died, had to close her home day-care center because so many parents whisked their children away when they learned that an AIDS patient lived there.

“So many people,” Barlow added sadly, “even today, their families turn away from them when they find out they have AIDS.”

Manion wanted to push her life to another level with a challenge she was not sure she could meet--a week’s trek of 525 miles completely under her own power for a cause she believed in.

She has neither close friends nor kin who have died of AIDS or live with the virus that causes it. Nevertheless, she said, “it’s such a small thing for me to do this, compared to someone who has to live with this disease.”

Not that it has been a carefree lark.

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To start with, fund-raising was scary. The pair were not sure they could meet the requirement of raising $2,500 apiece--until they and their fund-raising partner held a house party.

Friends made exotic hors d’oeuvres, the three showed a video of last year’s AIDS Ride and a speaker made a personal pitch to the guests. The women raised most of their pledges that night.

And the riding was hard--especially on Tuesday, Day 3.

The whole group slogged from Greenfield to Paso Robles in blistering temperatures that topped 110 degrees. Eight riders were treated for heat exhaustion, and nearly 100 were pulled off the course and bused into camp after some veered into the slow lanes of U.S. 101 in a daze.

Barlow remembers making a pit stop near San Antonio Mission at the peak of the heat and collapsing onto the grass to nap for nearly an hour. She was thinking about getting on the bus, but a woman encouraged her: “You can make it.”

Barlow said, “I got back on my bike and went on. . . . You really learn on this ride what a few words of encouragement can do for you.”

The sometimes brutal heat was the only downside, she said. Then she added with a laugh, “That and the butt thing.”

“My butt just hurt like you wouldn’t believe,” Manion chimed in. “It was hard to stay on the bike in the heat.”

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan planned to join the cyclists early this morning to ride the last leg of the journey.

And the women will don helmets and spandex pants for the seventh and final day of the AIDS Ride. They will ride into West Hollywood for closing ceremonies that organizers say will be mobbed by well-wishers.

And they might--either as crew members or riders--just do it all over again next year.

* Editor’s Note

Mack Reed has been biking with AIDS Ride 3 since Sunday. In addition to today’s story, he has been keeping a journal of the trip. The final installment will run Sunday.